Bill to ban 'vampire voting' would end late-night legislative sessions

ALBANY -- A bill to ban vampires is advancing in the state Legislature, but the only creatures of the night it targets are senators and assemblymen.

Sen. Terry Gipson's bill, officially known as the Vampire Voting Act of 2013, prohibits votes on bills between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. The freshman Democrat from Rhinebeck says he introduced the measure out of frustration with the Legislature scheduling votes for the middle of the night when most constituents are asleep.

"The state Senate has a long history of doing work in the wee hours of the morning, at the last minute at times, in what seems to be an effort to rush things through so they are not exposed to the light of day," he said Friday.

Gipson said the Legislature's habit of sitting around during the day, then going into night sessions for votes on controversial bills, must stop. He said this view is shared by many of the 213 members of the Legislature with whom he's spoken.

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"Why don't we just start in the morning and work in the daytime?" he said. "There's really no logical explanation to keep the status quo.

The bill cleared the Senate Government Operations Committee last week and is now in the Senate Finance Committee.

The Senate, which was in session until 4:30 a.m. one day last month while passing a budget, has not yet scheduled a vote on Gipson's bill.

For now, the Vampire Voting Act does not have a companion measure in the Assembly, which has also held late-night sessions in the past. A spokesman for the state Assembly said Friday that he knew of no plans for a member to introduce a similar bill.

Late-night sessions are not uncommon in other state legislatures. Wisconsin legislators trumpeted an agreement earlier this year to end the practice there.

"This bill will keep vampire bills from being passed in the middle of the night when controversial bills seem to come alive; bills that would wither and die if they were exposed to sunlight and citizens would have time to look at them," Gipson wrote in the memo attached to the bill. "No bill, no matter what the issue, should be brought to the floor close to or, even worse, after midnight when most people are asleep."

The vampire bill has the support of the League of Women Voters, Common Cause and New York Public Interest Research Group, three organizations often critical of the Legislature.

"At a time where it is commonplace for members of the press and elected officials to call for greater public civic engagement, conducting debates and votes on bills between midnight and 8 a.m., when most New Yorkers are asleep, speaks louder than any rhetorical calls for greater public involvement," they wrote in a joint statement released last week.

The Legislature's voting practices have come under sharp criticism since January, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed through a vote on new gun regulations. Cuomo said the last-minute vote was needed to prevent a rush on gun stores before new rules took effect. To some extent locally, though, that rush to purchase guns and ammunition occurred anyway, after the legislation passed.

Though Cuomo has promised the most transparent administration in state history, he has been assailed by critics for legislative tactics that have included stifling debate over the 2011 Marriage Equality bill and issuing last-minute bundled messages of necessity to rush votes on multiple controversial bills all at once.

Cuomo also routinely withholds from legislators an advance look at bills before they come up for a vote. He told reporters last week that the details are kept secret to minimize scrutiny and neutralize political opposition. The next day, he called into a public radio show to say he was only joking in his comments about withholding bills.